About Me

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

THE MARK IN AMERICA, ISSUE #3, PAGE 4

For
issue #3, I’ll be posting my rough layouts along with each page. Since the
writer, Mike Barr, and I were working “Marvel Style” (in that he gave me a fairly
fleshed out plot outline as opposed to a finished script, writing the dialogue
and captions to my penciled pages) I suggested possible dialogue to go along
with my staging, anticipating that Mike, or the editor, Bob Schreck, would ask
for changes in my layouts before I went into the tight pencils. This was how we
worked in the animation biz; I had been trained to accept that as a normal part
of the collaborative process.

Panels
3 and 4 are what is often called “cinematic”, in that both panels are “shot”
from the same “camera set-up”, as though it was more of a film storyboard. I’m
not sure if that’s a real term or if I’m making it up; check with Scott Cloud
and Will Eisner to verification. If it is a “real” comic’s grammar term, I
think it’s as relevant as “modern dance” which refers to a specific style of
dance done in the early 20th century, not as a descriptor of
whatever is currently happening in dance. I mean, as far as “cinematic” goes,
every panel on this page could be cinematic in so far as each one is a brief
moment in time, not, as on previous pages, several moments condensed into one
panel, organized, hopefully, by eye read.

This is page 4 for "The Mark" issue 3,
volume 2, otherwise known as "The Mark In America", published by Dark
Horse Comics in January 1994. Written by Mike Barr, Drawn by Brad Rader